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Go Ask Your Father: Calories, Sphincters, Magnificent, and Boats

Welcome to Saturday! Saturday morning actually. It is here anyway. We haven’t been here for an entire week. Perhaps we need more Saturdays in the week.

So there I was yesterday, watching Curious George with Bang when it dawned on me. I could watch Curious George all day long. It’s the one show I don’t mind watching over and over and over. I can relate to the Man in the Yellow Hat. I know what it’s like to have monkeys. Especially curious ones.

It seems the questions are coming full blast now. While I’m loving answering their questions, I can’t keep up. I forget their questions before I get a chance to write them down. They ask while I’m driving. They ask while we’re laying in bed at night. They ask while we’re out for a bike ride. The most inopportune times to enter them into Wunderlist on the cell phone.

1. What are calories?

This arose from watching TV. A yogurt commercial claimed to have just 80 calories. Inshort, a calorie is a unit of energy. Or at least that’s what I told Crash. His response was, “That yogurt has 80 units of energy.” You’ll find calories listed on all your food labels. Scientifically speaking, a food calorie is equivalent to the amount of energy required to raise one kilogram of water one degree Celsius. Your lifestyle can be a determinate on how many calories you need in a day. More sedentary lifestyles, as those of sloths and couch taters, require fewer calories. Those who lead active lifestyles, like athletes, require more calories. Kids require a million billion bajillion calories because they go and go and go and go and….

2. What’s an anal sphincter?

I don’t believe I had to answer this question. No questions are off limits. And thanks to Sheldon Cooper and The Big Bang Theory, here I am answering this. Here was the scene. Sheldon was trying to relax Leonard so Leonard wouldn’t get mad about not being mentioned in scientific journal article about a project he had worked on. So Sheldon was massaging Leonard’s shoulders and told him to relax all his muscles. Except his anal sphincter, don’t relax that. So if you had a map and a flashlight, where would you find an anal sphincter? You’re poop hole. Fun fact: sphincters are strong enough to restrict the passage of any fecal material but sensitive enough to differentiate between solid, liquid, and gas. Just like dad… strong yet sensitive. Eight year olds just LOVE that word, poop, too. So please don’t relax your sphincter. You’ll have a message of infantile proportions.

Note: I’m including pictures of anal sphincters. You can Google those on your own time.

3.What’s magnificent?

I am, son. Totally. Well, not so much magnificent as awesome or super or any other word that would describe a dad. Though, compared to mom words, these are mediocre descriptions. Thanks to “The Day The Crayons Came Home” the sequel to “The Day The Crayons Quit” we have the word magnificent. Poor Pea Green doesn’t like his name because nobody likes peas or pea green. So he changes it to Esteban the Magnificent. He goes off to explore the world, but since it’s rainy he decides to stay home where it’s nice and dry. Those are two great books to read. Kids love them and they’re not so bad if you have to read them 3 kajillion times.

The real Esteban

Bang’s Esteban

4. Why do boats float?

Because their hull pushes A LOT of water out of the way.

Pushing water out of the way is called displacement. Archimedes realized this when he took a bath. The water level in his tub rose after he got in. This was his body displacing water to make room for itself. If an object is lighter than the amount of water it displaces it will float. That’s why a small iron nail sinks while giant iron ship can float. The nail doesn’t have to displace much water to make room for itself while a ship displaces tons of water. In water, there are two forces acting upon the object. Gravity, which pulls downward and buoyancy which pushes upward. The more water an object displaces the more buoyant it is. I, apparently, don’t displace much water because I can’t float. However, DW has two, built in flotation devices. So, should we ever go overboard, I’ll be clinging to her. Lest I become lobster bait.